[lg policy] French, No Please

Sat Mar 23 14:50:28 UTC 2019

French? No Please.
Source: Ghana| Nii Ayitey Komey
Date: 22-03-2019 Time: 03:03:05:pm
Shirley Ayorkor Botchway is Ghana's Foreign Minister
E-mail
<?subject=Foreign%20languages%20such%20as%20English%2C%20French%2C%20Portuguese%20and%20Arabic%20came%20to%20the%20continent%20together%20with%20the%20migration%20and%20subsequent%20slave%20trade%20by%20the%20Eurasians%20from%20the%2010th%20to%20the%2018th%20centuries.&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.myjoyonline.com%2Fopinion%2F2019%2Fmarch-22nd%2Ffrench-no-please.php>
Tweet
<http://www.myjoyonline.com/opinion/2019/march-22nd/french-no-please.php#>
WhatsApp
Share
<http://www.myjoyonline.com/opinion/2019/march-22nd/french-no-please.php#>
52
Share
<http://www.myjoyonline.com/opinion/2019/march-22nd/french-no-please.php#>
<https://www.myjoyonline.com/services/2019/February-23rd/free-spectacles-for-students-new-treatment-for-glaucoma-.php>

*If the elders leave you a dignified language, you do not abandon it and
speak childish language – African proverb*

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration in Ghana, Shirley
Ayorkor Botchwey, has reignited the debate about national languages after
her recent comments at the 2019 La Francophonie week in the Ghanaian
capital, Accra.

She stated that there are, “plans by government to include the promotion of
the learning of French in basic schools and across all other levels of
learning, as part of a general reform of Ghana’s education sector” and that
“the decision to obtain French as a second language is a major concern of
the Government of Ghana, in line with national priorities.”

This move has brought back the debate about what should be our official
mode of communication, especially in relation to intercontinental
relations. In this article, I seek to enlighten readers over the history of
foreign languages, especially French in Africa. Furthermore, this article
will discuss the trending developments in other African countries with
regards to the language debate. In the concluding section, this article
will seek to analyse what Ghana ought to be looking to with the political
choice of adopting a second language.

*Historical Infiltration of languages*

Foreign languages such as English, French, Portuguese and Arabic came to
the continent together with the migration and subsequent slave trade by the
Eurasians from the 10th to the 18th centuries.

In 1884, during the Berlin Conference when the Western countries blatantly
shared Africa among themselves, the colonial masters went ahead to
introduce their languages in their various colonies as they sought to
impose their domination and control over these colonies.

Together with the proliferation of religion, especially the going of
Christian missionaries into the continent, the ways of Africans, including
their language, was looked down on as primitive and backward. These
missionaries and colonialists in their bid to ‘civilise’ the people, sought
to demonize their ways of life, including the languages they spoke.

The French, during the late 18th century, for instance, believed that they
were the superior race and hence their ideals of equality, liberty and
fraternity should be adopted by the whole world and thus until 1946, the
major policy of French colonial governance in Africa was Assimilation.

This policy aimed at turning the natives of Africa in the French colonies
into French people by educating them in the French language and culture and
subsequently making them become French citizens and equals. Essentially,
the policy, which has been described as worse than slavery itself, was
aimed at erasing African tradition and culture and replacing them with that
of the French. The French thus proceeded to open schools in their
respective colonies to teach natives both the French culture and language,
with the hope that as they learned the French way of life, they would be
more complacent under French rule. Apart from undermining the African
culture, the policy of assimilation also eroded the powers of traditional
rulers and made them puppets, so to speak, of the French. Thus, as stated
earlier, their so-called civilization also implied that everything African
was absurd and ungodly.

 This policy has since been replaced with the policy of Association, which
aims at respecting the culture of Africans. However, large chunks of the
traits of the policy of Assimilation are still visible today, especially in
Francophone countries in West Africa.

THRIVING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN AFRICA

After independence however, most of these countries have maintained the
language of the colonialists with the explanation that it provides access
to all persons in their various countries. Nigeria for instance, has over
two hundred languages, and so the speaking and teaching of English across
the country is presumed to provide access to a larger number of people
rather than choosing the volatile option of any of the three major
languages.

In Ghana, English was maintained as the major language of communication and
used for official functions after independence. Kwame Nkrumah’s
Pan-Africanist ideologies meant he was a vocal advocate for its adoption as
a continental lingua franca and this formed the key motivational factor for
the adoption of Kiswahili by institutions such as the Ghana Broadcasting
Corporation in 1961, Ghana Institute of Languages in 1963 as part of its
founding languages and the University of Ghana in October 1964. However,
the growth of the Kiswahili languages has been hit by many challenges and
has since bogged down in terms of usage.

Western languages have thus been the most dominant mode of communication in
most African countries, especially after the mid-20th century when most of
these countries attained independence. But in 2004 at his farewell speech
as the chairman of the African Union (AU), then-president of Mozambique,
Joaquim Chissano surprised African leaders by delivering his remarks in
Kiswahili.

At the time, the AU only used English, Portuguese, Arabic, and French as
its official languages, and government officials, caught unaware, scrambled
to find translators. This event later drove the African Union to introduce
Kiswahili as an official language.

With Swahili speakers reaching approximately 100 million people on the
African continent, it is by far the most widely spoken African language
(with over 30 million more speakers than Hausa, in second, which has over
63 million speakers) and many governments and activists have moved to call
for institutions, both local and foreign, to embrace the Swahili language
describing it as Africa’s most “internationally recognized language”.

In 2015, Tanzania announced it would dump English and solely stick to
Kiswahili as a language of instruction. Starting in 2020 in South Africa,
schools will teach Kiswahili as an optional language, making it the first
African language outside South Africa to be offered in class. In March
2019, Tanzania also agreed to send Kiswahili teachers to South Sudan to
help the world's newest nation master the African Great Lakes region's
lingua franca. All these countries have one aim: to promote unity and
“social cohesion with fellow Africans.” As Quartz Africa writer Abdi Latif
Dahir stated in September 2018:

The push to embrace the Swahili language comes as African countries look
into plans to reform and critically assess their education systems. There’s
also the recognition that the continent needs a new strategy for
mother-tongue based education from primary through to tertiary level
education, and to cast aside dependence on foreign languages.

This realization also arrives as African languages continue to die as
governments adopt official languages while discouraging local ones, in
hopes of forging a harmonized national identity.

 *Conclusion: Ghana’s supposed way forward?*

With all these happenings across the continent, it is baffling, puzzling
and mystifying that the government of Ghana is, as a matter of national
priority, seeking to introduce French as a second national language to
“improve regional integration” when others are emancipating themselves from
mental slavery by adopting one of “ours” as an alternative national
language.

In a time when there is the promotion of a nationalistic agenda to eat
Ghana, wear Ghana, see Ghana etc it would be prudent to join the wind
blowing across other countries to speak Africa as we flare the dying flame
of nationalistic and Pan-Africanist patriotism.

Language is a tool used in the intellectual warfare and an instrument of
mental neo-colonization. As we continue to break down the shackles of
colonization, we should see the re-emergence of this debate as, rightly put
by South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters party leader Julius Malema,
“(an opportunity to) develop a common language that can be used throughout
the continent. We need one Africa. But to achieve this, Africa needs one
language that can unite the people.”

-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

-------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20190323/49fbdaa4/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list